Operation Kosovo: KRYSIS NET
The Kosovo Refugee Information System and Network

Maps of Region
Chronology of recent events Source:  BBC News

1989
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic takes away Kosovo's autonomy.  Street violence erupts when the Kosovo assembly approves the measure. Violence escalates and more than 20 people are killed.

1990
January - Violent clashes between police and ethnic Albanian demonstrators continue. Police shoot dead at least 10.
February - Yugoslavia sends troops, tanks, warplanes and 2,000 more police to Kosovo. By the end of the month more than 20 people have been killed and a curfew imposed.
July - Ethnic Albanian legislators in the province declare independence. Serbia dissolves the Kosovo assembly. Strikes and protests continue.

1991
The Bosnian war begins. Neighboring Albania's parliament recognizes Kosovo as an independent republic.

1992
May - Writer Ibrahim Rugova is elected president of the self-proclaimed republic after an election held in defiance of Serbian authorities.
October - Serb and ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo hold face-to-face peace talks for the first time in three years.

1993
Police arrest more than 30 ethnic Albanians on suspicion of preparing an armed uprising.

1995
July - A Serbian court sentences 68 ethnic Albanians for up to eight years in prison for allegedly setting up a parallel police force.
August - Serbian authorities settle several hundred Croatian Serb refugees in Kosovo, drawing protests from ethnic Albanian leaders.

1996
Serbia signs a deal with ethnic Albanian leaders to return Albanian students to mainstream education after a six-year boycott of state schools and colleges.
The clandestine separatist group Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerges for the first time claiming responsibility for a series of bomb attacks.

1997
January - The Serb rector of Pristina University is badly injured by a car bomb.
A suspected leader of the outlawed KLA is killed in a gun battle with police.
March - Four people are injured when a bomb explodes in the centre of Pristina.
September - Armed men stage simultaneous night attacks on police stations in 10 Kosovo towns and villages. As the number of guerrilla incidents increase, clashes also continue sporadically between police and peaceful protesters.
October-December - A grenade and machinegun raid is made on a Serb refugee camp, but there are no casualties.
Separatists claim to have shot down a Yugoslav Airlines training aircraft.

1998

January - An ethnic Serb politician is killed in apparent retaliation for the reported killing of an ethnic Albanian by the police.
February/March - Dozens are killed in Serbian police operations against suspected Albanian separatists in the Drenica region of Kosovo. Houses are burned and villages evacuated.
Tens of thousands protest in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, against the violence, and street clashes erupt.
Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, disregarding Western calls for compromise, demands outright independence for Kosovo.
Ethnic Albanians vote for a president and parliament in elections which are considered illegal by Belgrade.
April - Ninety-five per cent of Serbs vote against international intervention in Kosovo, in a referendum.
The Contact Group for the Former Yugoslavia agree, with the exception of Russia, to impose new sanctions against Serbia over Kosovo.
May - US envoy Richard Holbrooke begins a round of shuttle diplomacy which results in Yugoslav President Milosevic inviting Ibrahim Rugova for peace talks.
Ethnic Albanian and Serb negotiators start talks in Pristina.
 Serbian forces mount an offensive in the border region with Albania, reportedly in response to an attack by separatists.